


Two Coppers For The Eyes

by GreenFeltCap



Category: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-10-19
Updated: 2014-10-19
Packaged: 2018-02-21 20:26:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2481323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GreenFeltCap/pseuds/GreenFeltCap
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A journey from gutter kid to thief to killer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Two Coppers For The Eyes

**Author's Note:**

> This story is a character arc, and not a very steep one. Just those backstory coding thoughts I get when I'm playing, put into prose form. Thought it might be interesting.

"Copper?" said the girl hopefully.  
"Morning, Copper," said Bolli the fisher, and tossed her a coin. She caught it and grinned at him, showing off her missing front teeth. "Thank you, kind sir!" she trilled, shoving the coin into her shirt. She liked the fisher. He was reliable. She made bigeyes at another passerby. "Copper? Kind sir?"  
This man was not from Riften. He knelt to put his face at Copper's level, and smiled in the way adults smile when they think they are good with children. Copper fingered the knife in her skirt. She could have said it with him:  
"Where're your parents, child?"  
She gave him bigeyes a moment longer before looking sadly at her feet. "Somewhere nice," she said, letting her golden curls fall winningly around her face.  
"Somewhere nice?"  
Oh. He was thick.  
"That's what the priest said," she prompted.  
"Oh," said the man, figuring it out.  
"I'm all right, though," she continued, smiling bravely. "Just... a little hungry, is all."  
He made a thoughtful sound. She waited a calculated moment, then said, "Can I have a copper, please?"  
He smiled. "Wouldn't you like to go someplace with a hot meal and a warm bed and someone to take care of you?"  
Copper giggled, flashing her missing teeth. "Well, sure," she said. "And I'd like to learn to fly, too." She caressed her knife.  
"Didn't you know there's a place like that not far from here?" He was really pleased with himself. She blinked at him, and made her mouth a little pink o.  
"Really, sir? Where?"  
"Would you like me to show you?"  
"Oh yes, please kind sir," she exclaimed, hopping in place a little.  
The man stood up, smiling far too much, and offered a hand, which Copper took, giving him a trusting smile. Not as thick as all that, then, or maybe lucky. They were soft hands. She spotted his purse on his belt. It was on the side near her. Bulging. She felt excitement rising in her belly. Thick after all.  
As they walked through the square, someone bumped into them. He stopped and apologized.  
Copper was long gone.  
\---  
Honorhall Orphanage.  
Every one of Riften's alley kids knew what it was. It was a trap. They lured you in with promise of food and beds and parents, and then turned you into a zombie, or worse. Everyone knew somebody who'd disappeared, and turned up later in that tiny courtyard, scrubbed raw and thinner than ever, with eyes like dead fish. Copper had crept up to the fence once, tried to help them make a break. But they would not come. They ignored her, until finally one, in a whisper, told her to leave, or else.  
Sometimes a kid would disappear from the courtyard. They all heard the screams. They could guess what had happened. Many thought the old woman who lived there had eaten them alive. They whispered that she was part hagraven. Copper thought that seemed likely, though she had never seen a hagraven.  
What was worse, they fooled grownups, too. Even the ones who laughed and called her 'Grelod the Kind' tried to drag kids there. Begging wasn't reliable anymore, or safe. She couldn't even go to the temple of Mara anymore.  
The Orphanage was sucking them all in.  
\---  
"Hello there, little lass."  
Copper plunged her hands into her skirt folds so fast that her knuckles rapped painfully against the planks. She kicked herself mentally; she has been so absorbed in the spell she was practicing that she hadn't heard anyone coming. Heart pounding, she plastered on her innocent face and looked up.  
"Copper?" she said.  
Then she realized that the young man standing over her was one she knew. He was chuckling. She let her face relax. "Oh. You."  
"Mind if I sit?" He plopped himself down next to Copper and rested his heels on the edge of the planks. His legs were too gangly to dangle like Copper's without getting wet, and he had shoes to think about.  
Copper reckoned Brynjolf must have been an alley kid once. He was hard to fool. He seemed to know her tricks already. But his reaction was to give her a sideways grin and tips. Two years ago he'd asked how old she was, and she'd said twelve - he'd laughed, shook his head, and said 'No, you want to undershoot, not overshoot. You could probably get away with seven.' So she claimed seven, and her take had improved, though this year she'd finally had to turn eight. She experimented with claiming it was her birthday, and her take improved again.  
And Brynjolf was a sneaker. He was good at disappearing. Copper once saw him vanish from right in front of her when a 'dissatisfied customer' turned up with a guard. After that she watched him, and tried to follow him. But he knew she was there, and often even winked at her just before he rounded a corner and was gone. So she made a game of sneaking up on him. He gave her a honey treat the first day she'd managed to surprise him at his stall. But still she couldn't find out where he went.  
"So. You're cutting purses now," said Brynjolf.  
Copper glanced at him. 'Now,' he'd said, but he surely knew this wasn't the first time. "I never done nothin'," she decided.  
"Of course not," said Brynjolf. "I see you haven't any magical talent, either. That's good. Keep not practicing."  
Copper scowled. Her magic was hers. But... she was secretly a little happy that he approved.  
"Now, lass. We can't have you taking up freelance thieving," he said, looking out over the canal.  
"But, Brynjolf -" she started, stomach sinking. Of everyone, he had to be the one to come out with this? Anyone else, she could avoid, but he knew all the good hiding spots, and... He was shaking his head. And smiling. Copper frowned. No, that wouldn't be Brynjolf. His words floated back across her brain.  
"...Freelance thieving?" she said.  
"That's my girl," said Brynjolf. "Now, listen. I have a little job to do, and I could use a little pair of hands..."  
\---  
Copper pulled her hood closer around her face. She stuck close to the damp stones of the arch to keep out of the wind as much as to stay hidden. Even at this hour, and in the threat of a storm, a few citizens of Windhelm still went stubbornly about some damnable business.  
She was sixteen, and only somewhat less skinny than she had been at twelve, though her face was more pointed. Her hair had grown much darker and straighter, which would have been a shame given how much people seemed to like golden ringlets, but she was getting old for begging anyway. She'd chopped it short. She had better things to do now, and this was her first job on her own outside of Riften.  
The cloud cover was complete now, and increasing all the time, boiling in the wind. There were no patches of moonlight to highlight the thief as she stole up to the door.  
For a moment she paused, listening. She thought she heard a soft thumping from inside. But the house was certainly abandoned; she'd trigged the jigger just in case, and the bit of paper she'd used as the trig was still there.  
She held the door still so it would not rattle as she coaxed the lock into the position it truly wanted to be in. The bolt slid back without a sound under her careful pressure.  
She smiled to herself. A good black art job was so satisfying.  
The door opened with a waft of rot-smelling, unsettlingly metallic air. The thumping sound was certainly coming from inside.  
Immediately inside were stairs. She crept up them, resting her weight near the wall to minimize squeaking.  
She paused, part way up. Someone was talking above.  
A kid's voice, she thought, pricking her ears. It spoke softly, and faded in and out, blunt and rhythmic, in time with the thumping.  
"...sweet mother, sweet mother..."  
Some sort of prayer...  
"...must be baptized in blood and fear..."  
Copper's brow creased.  
She took another step up and peered over the top of the stairwell. A barren room. No sign of her target. There was the kid, kneeling on the floor in profile, in front of a crude shrine.  
Candlelight reflected eerily off of a face no child should have. The cheeks were gaunt, the eyes glinted glassily in sunken purple sockets, the lips were cracked and peeling. Copper had seen a face like that on a couple of kids, the floaters, the ones who never survived long enough to be alley kids. He looked like he was barely holding on to consciousness. He must've been here at least since yesterday, since her trig hadn't fallen. Doing this the whole time?  
As she watched, he doggedly began the chant again. It was punctuated by heavy blows to something obscured by the angle of the wall.  
"Sweet mother, sweet mother, send your child unto me, for the sins of the unworthy must be baptized in blood and fear."  
Well that was a tad creepy, she thought. But he was as absorbed as it got, with the tunnel vision of exhaustion.  
His presence just added interest to the job.  
Copper continued up the stairs, scanning the room. There didn't seem to be an upper floor. This was it, then. Was it not here? The place did look kind of topsy-turvy. There was the one dresser. She'd check the drawers.  
She glanced at the boy as she made to catfoot past.  
A sparkle.  
She stopped.  
Her target. Right in front of him.  
There was a ragged chunk of meat on it. He was stabbing it. He was using her target as an offering plate. And stabbing it.  
Reddish-brown markings scarred the floor all around it. Was that blood? How... gauche. It explained the smell.  
What had she walked in on?  
Well, maybe she could still nab it. Maybe he would pass out soon.  
She positioned herself against the wall behind him and settled into her hood to wait.  
He droned on.  
The first drops of rain pattered against the roof, too sharply for water, implying ice. It picked up quickly and became one continuous sound.  
His words became slurred.  
He trailed off, seemed to slump. Copper watched patiently.  
He started, with a gasp, and spun around, wide eyes looking directly at her.  
Damn.  
"You came!" he whispered.  
What? Was the kid paranoid?  
"I knew you would... I did everything right... And now you can accept my contract!" he continued, with a manic, shaky smile, eyes overbright.  
Okay. Maybe she could bluff this out. She raised her chin and gave him an imperious look.  
"I - I have payment! Look! A family heirloom... I think it's worth a lot..." he grabbed the dish out from under the long-suffering meat and held it out for inspection. Old, oily blood rolled down it, making black stains on his sleeves.  
Her target.  
She smiled.  
The boy gave a gasping sigh. "Then... I want you to kill Grelod the Kind!"  
Copper had to fight to keep her face under control.  
"She's at Honorhall Orphanage. In Riften," the boy continued. "They call her that, but she's not. They took me there after ma and pa died. I escaped... I promised them I'd call you. The other kids. I-I'm Aventus. Aretino."  
The boy was wobbling. Copper held up a hand, and he trailed off. She waited a moment, letting the rain creep into the silence.  
"The contract is sealed," she said, in a husky whisper. A green glow surrounded her hand, making the room look like a lakebed. The boy watched her hand, hypnotized, smiling dully. In this weird light, he looked as long dead as his sacrifice. She touched his forehead, and he collapsed, asleep.  
\---  
Dawn broke, cold and misty. The Aretino boy lay across the horse's hindquarters, still dead asleep, still clutching the dish.  
She couldn't get him to let it go, and in the end, she'd had to bring him or chop off his hands. He'd slept all through their departure from Windhelm, right through the bumps he got when Copper had to do some climbing to avoid being asked awkward questions about kidnapping, and right through being slung on a horse and jounced around for several hours, all in the freezing rain. And still hanging onto the damned dish. The boy must have had merchants for parents.  
Copper reckoned she might have overdone it a bit with the sleep spell. It hadn't been necessary, but it had been dramatically appropriate.  
Oh well. She could still make this work. She wasn't coming back empty-handed on her first out of town job. Not when the Guild was down on its luck like this. They needed the take.  
She dropped off the horse and hefted the kid. Gods, what a stench he had. She dropped him off on the doorstep of the temple and sherried off for the other side of town.  
\---  
You weren't supposed to kill people.  
That wasn't how the Guild operated. You slip in, you take, you slip out, no muss, no fuss. If you killed someone, you got up to your wattles in muss AND fuss. If you got rustled, you gabbed or you scarpered. She'd done the gab, and she'd got muss and fuss anyway.  
This would clear it up, though. Brynjolf didn't have to know. The old hagraven wasn't part of the job, not really, so that was all right. He couldn't say she'd broken any rules. Anyway, snuffing her would practically be a public service.  
Grelod was a tiny shriveled woman, as crumpled and fragile as paper, for all her cruelty. Her face was creased with fury, even in sleep. But somehow there was nothing there but bristle. How petty a thing.  
Copper slid the blade across her throat, smoothly, like the stroke of a paintbrush. It barely caught as it entered the windpipe. The blood beaded and began to flow, in thick black dribbles, then faster, spurting, pushing the cut open. The dying thing coughed, spraying droplets over the bedspread. Her hands jerked to her throat. Her mouth made shapes. Gurgling, spluttering sounds came out. Eyes like chips of onyx rolled and flickered. Copper grabbed hold of the wrists and forced the sticky hands down over the mouth. She mustn't make so much noise. She'd wake up the kids, and that'd be a problem.  
She leaned on the hands, watching the eyes closely. The body was twitching.  
She waited.  
After a moment, she cut a shank of its hair for proof, wiped her blade carefully on its clothing, and left it in the spreading stain, its hands over its mouth.  
\---  
He hadn't even wanted the proof, Copper reflected as she nipped around into the boneyard, plate under one arm. It was a little irritating, really. He'd been well fixed up by the acolytes, but he was still apparently delerious enough to be stupid. She could've bathed her blade in a rat and walked off with the plate.  
Oh well. So she'd played fair this time. No harm done...  
And maybe some good, she thought, as her ear pricked to the sound of children cheering.  
She'd completed her first outside burglary job, and hadn't even lost much time. She slid open the panel that was the Guild's back door and dropped through, with a flip of her hair and a smile on her face.


End file.
